![]() You can upgrade your cyberdeck’s capabilities, for example, but doing so really only allows you to open doors and chests containing more powerful weapons to shoot bad guys with. There is an at times overly-fussy layer of RPG-esque mechanics and character progression to get to grips with but The Ascent is very much an arcade game at heart. If you’re not used to such a control scheme then it can initially feel like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time there are plenty of opportunities to practice, though, as enemies come at you literally from all angles during every encounter – sometimes seemingly materialising out of previously deserted spaces to do so. Playing with a joypad, the left thumbstick controls movement while the right one points your weapon. Tellingly a watering hole in the game’s first social hub is named Ratz – surely a knowing nod to the latter’s cult bartender who displays “a webwork of decayed teeth and East European steel prosthetics’ when he smiles. ![]() The Ascent draws heavily on the genre’s twin ‘80s totems of director Ridley Scott’s visual blueprint, Blade Runner, and author William Gibson’s set text, Neuromancer. If that sounds somewhat familiar then let’s be charitable and describe Neon Giant as ‘cyberpunk classicists’. They’d be missing out, though, because while this isometric action adventure lacks CD Projeckt Red’s unfettered – some would say unrealistic – ambition, it gets far more right than it does wrong.Ĭhief among those is The Ascent’s stunningly realised gameworld, set within a multi-tiered arcology in the dysfunctional future civilisation of Veles, where militaristic mega-corporations wage war for market share, disenfranchised 'indents' eke out an existence as slave labourers, and back alley clinics offer cybernetic implants for credits. Presumably there are plenty of disgruntled gamers who can think of few things they’d rather do less than risk another nightmarish trip to the near future. ![]() ![]() Three years later, following the catastrophic console launch of Cyberpunk 2077 at the end of last year, those same developers could be forgiven for feeling less sure of themselves. When the dozen intrepid indie developers who comprise the core of Swedish studio Neon Giant first embarked on The Ascent back in 2018, cyberpunk-inspired role playing games represented the very zenith of gaming’s zeitgeist. ![]()
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